The Koch brothers' company bought a Super Bowl ad

The Koch brothers' company are advertising in Sunday's Super Bowl.Billionaires Charles and David Koch are well...

Posted: Feb. 2, 2018 1:44 AM

Updated: Feb. 2, 2018 1:44 AM

The Koch brothers' company are advertising in Sunday's Super Bowl.

Billionaires Charles and David Koch are well known for spending enormous sums of money to back conservative politicians and causes.

But they're also the owners of Koch Industries, which deals in petroleum, chemicals, energy, commodities trading and several other businesses. It is the second-largest private company in America, according to Forbes, with $100 billion in revenue and 100,000 employees.

The Kochs launched the ad campaign, called "Challenge Accepted," to educate people about what the company does, said company spokesman Steve Lombardo.

"The ads are basically filling an information gap," Lombardo said. "Right now, people really don't know much about Koch at all -- what we do, the products we provide."

The Super Bowl adswill air in regional markets. Koch ads will also air nationwide during this month's Olympics, beginning with the opening ceremonies. The campaign was first reported Thursday by the Wall Street Journal.

Lombardo declined to say where the Super Bowl ads would be broadcast, though he added that fluctuations in ad prices could cause those markets to change. He would also not say how much Koch Industries is spending on the commercials.

The company first began advertising on national TV in 2014 with its "We Are Koch" campaign. That ad opened with a sweeping shot of a tractor rolling across farmland as a woman announced that Koch Industries was "proudly built on American values and skill."

Lombardo described the new ads as "phase two" of that campaign. Some ads will feature workers, while others will feature people "taking on challenges in every day life."